Monthly Archives: June 2014

House GOP Speaker has told President Obama Immigration reform is gone for the year….

The White House will work the issue without Congress for now….

“The president will continue to make clear that regardless of the steps he takes through administrative action, nothing replaces Congress’ ability to pass common-sense immigration reform, and will continue to make the case for a comprehensive bill,” the White House official said. “But the unwillingness of the congressional Republicans to cast an up-or-down vote over the past year has not only meant inaction on reform, but has also meant less resources to strengthen our borders.”

Obama will take two key steps in his new immigration push, the White House official said.
First, he will direct Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to shift immigration enforcement resources from the interior section of the United States to the border. And Obama is asking administration officials to send him recommendations on other additional actions that he can pursue without the blessing of Congress…..

A year after Snowden skipped own with a LOT of American Intelligence data, he’s stranded in Moscow and the NSA is still vacuuming up stuff…..

Oh, and there is NO guarantee someone else won’t do the same thing tomorrow…

After all, we ARE dealing with people …Not machines….

The nation’s new director of the National Security Agency is downplaying the effects of Edward Snowden’s leaks.

In a stark contrast with how his predecessor characterized the damage caused by Snowden, Adm. Michael Rogers said that while terrorist groups have adjusted their operations after Snowden’s leaks, it is not causing the sky to fall.

“I have seen groups not only talk about making changes, I have seen them make changes,” Rogers said in an hour-long interview with The New York Times. “You have not heard me as the director say, ‘Oh, my God, the sky is falling.’ I am trying to be very specific and very measured in my characterizations.”

Rogers took over earlier this year from Gen. Keith Alexander, who said Snowden’s disclosures have done the “greatest damage to our combined nation’ intelligence systems that we have ever suffered.”

The documents Snowden began leaking more than a year ago, Rogers acknowledged, have changed how technology companies work with the NSA.

AT&T, Verizon and social media companies now insist that “you are going to have to compel us” to hand over information, he said.

Rogers said the NSA has slightly calibrated its operations after President Obama directed his administration to curb some of its foreign surveillance.

“There are some specific targets where we’ve been instructed, ‘Hey, don’t collect against them anymore,’ ” he said. He declined to specify how many beyond noting, “Probably more than half a dozen, but not in the hundreds by any means.”

Rogers said there is no guarantee the NSA can prevent a similar internal attack again…..

The Secret Service is always the poster people for security for the President….

But when American go in harms way around the planet that security responsibility fall to the State Departments Dipolamatic Security Service…..

The agency works for a department that values getting along with other nations and plays a second fiddle to that when it comes to money , equipment and personnel….

Back in Iraq when things where hopping with Paul Bremer and others running around Iraq, the State Department just did not have the manpower to provide its own people to provide security around Iraq which was on a war footing….

So they hire Blackwater to provide most of the muscle…

The company, formed by an ex-Navy SEAL has among its staff ex-Special Operator’s from the US and around the world….

In Iraq things got away from the State Department….

Things got sideways as a result….

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created “an environment full of liability and negligence.”

“The management structures in place to manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors themselves,” the investigator, Jean C. Richter, wrote in an Aug. 31, 2007, memo to State Department officials. “Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law,” he said, adding that the “hands off” management resulted in a situation in which “the contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.”

His memo and other newly disclosed State Department documents make clear that the department was alerted to serious problems involving Blackwater and its government overseers before the Nisour Square shooting, which outraged Iraqis and deepened resentment over the United States’ presence in the country.

Today, as conflict rages again in Iraq, four Blackwater guards involved in the Nisour Square shooting are on trial in Washington on charges stemming from the episode, the government’s second attempt to prosecute the case in an American court after previous charges against five guards were dismissed in 2009.

The shooting was a watershed moment in the American occupation of Iraq, and was a factor in Iraq’s refusal the next year to agree to a treaty allowing United States troops to stay in the country beyond 2011. Despite a series of investigations in the wake of Nisour Square, the back story of what happened with Blackwater and the embassy in Baghdad before the fateful shooting has never been fully told…..

The U.S. Supreme Court has given corporations even more personhood by deciding that they can have religious beliefs in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores. They ruled that closely held companies are exempt from the contraceptive coverage mandate for their employees’ health insurance, and are exempt from that provision of the Affordable Care Act. The decision, 5-4 and the majority opinion written by Alito, is being described as “narrow.” It is narrow, in that basically only applies to women.

This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates, that is for blood transfusions or vaccinations, necessarily fail if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs.

Men could need blood transfusions or vaccinations, so of course they can’t allow the exemption from Obamacare to extend to them. The Court then says that this ruling is preventing discrimination. That would be discrimination against who really matters to the majority of the Roberts Court—corporations.

The decision also only applies to “closely held” corporations, which the IRS defines as having more than 50 percent of its stock owned by 5 or fewer individuals. It says that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires that the “government provide closely-held corporate objectors the same accommodation it already provides nonprofit organization objectors.”

So religious belief trumps medical science and women’s ability to make their own health care decisions, and corporations get to dictate that, according to the majority of the Supreme Court.

Senate:KY-Sen: An internal poll from the McConnell campaign has him up 7 points over challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes. This was in response to a PPP-client poll showing ALG up 2 points. This isn’t where McConnell wants to be a month after his primary, but he’s always done well in close races.

SC-Sen-G: Former South Carolina State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel has announced he intends to run as a 3rd-party candidate for Senate. Ravenel, known as T-Rav on the reality show Southern Charm, indicated he would run as a 3rd-party candidate if Graham won renomination (which he did), and appears to be running as a Paul-style Isolationist Conservative. Ravenal would need 10,000 signatures by mid-July, and it remains to be seen if he can actually get them, as his 10-month stint in federal prison for cocaine charges will likely temper enthusiam for his bid.

GA-Gov: A new insider advantage poll has incumbent Governor Nathan Deal (R) up 47-40 on his challenger Jason Carter. Deal has been up a small-but-consistant margin in his quest for re-election, and this might be the point where he slowly starts to put it beyond reach.

NM-Gov: A poll from BWD Global for the State Repbulican party has Governor Susana Martinez up 53-40 over Democrat Gary King. The poll is apparently a few weeks old. Scroll to the “June 27th” post on this blog, as I can’t like to it directly.

TX-Gov: Apparently the rest of the media has caught on to what political geeks have known for months now—Wendy Davis (D) is finding little support in her bid for Governor. She’s fundraising well and attracting a lot of support from the Democratic base nationwide, but hasn’t been able to connect with Texas’s many conservative voters and is still below the Texas D’s low ceiling. Its almost like being a pro-choice warrior is a bad thing when trying to take on the most popular man in the state….

She has been a good solider …Doing her time to support her country and the man who beat here in 2008…..

The logic of Clinton’s rapprochement with the Obama crew also explained her rehabilitation across the rest of the party. Clinton’s willingness to join the Cabinet boosted her favorability rating more than 10 points among Democrats between late 2008 and early 2009. And with the party largely united on everything from tax cuts to entitlements to climate change to health care, there was no ideological rift to come between her and any particular faction. “Democrats are less polarized even than we were in 2006–2008, when our involvement in Iraq was front and center,” Clinton’s former presidential campaign strategist, Geoff Garin, told me.

Above all, as the Republican Party became more crazed and abusive, even previously skeptical Democrats saw Clinton differently, a pattern that has recurred throughout her career. “There’s a respect for her as an accomplished senior player who stood up to right-wing attacks,” says Ilya Sheyman, head of the liberal group MoveOn.org Political Action.

Unfortunately for Clinton, the years leading up to 2008 were one of the rare moments when she didn’t benefit from this dynamic. A Republican controlled the White House, making the Clintons less likely to arouse the right’s conspiratorial mania. Worse, because that Republican had been uniquely divisive, many Democrats had reservations about politicians associated with the same shiv-wielding tactics. “They worried that as a standard-bearer she might be polarizing,” says Larry Grisolano, who oversaw the Obama campaign’s polling in 2008.

But in the last few years, with Democrats in power and Clinton emerging as Obama’s chosen successor, the assaults from Republicans—on her age, her health, her central role in a variety of imagined conspiracies—have escalated, prompting a return to ’90s-era solidarity. “The things that have been thrown at her have never been thrown at any other candidate or spouse,” says Bonnie Adkins, another former Obama precinct captain, who took pride in taking down the high-handed Clinton campaign in 2008. “I’m more concerned with her personal mental heath. Not that she has mental health issues. Just how she deals with it. It’s more empathy than concern.” Adkins says she feels a particular connection with Clinton as a woman: “If you haven’t had a baby yet, you haven’t done anything.”

The upshot of all these developments is a preposterous level of support. Since she joined the administration, Clinton’s favorability rating among Democrats has never dropped below 88 percent, according to Gallup. (By comparison, Joe Biden’s favorability numbers have generally hovered in the low-to-mid 70s.) Her hold on the Democratic nomination looks unshakable….

The Governor is trying to salvage his 2016 chances in the GOP Presidential Sweepstakes….

Entitlement was a common trait in the parade of good ol’ boys that dominated Bayou State politics for more than a century. But Jindal, an Indian-American raised by demanding immigrant parents in a middle-class Baton Rouge suburb, stormed into office in 2008 on the strength of something different — a hard-earned résumé, and a talent for convincing suspicious, tight-knit pockets of voters that he was one of them. Now, the most underrated prospect in the 2016 presidential field is plotting the charm offensive that could carry him to the White House. His target: the religious right.

While much of the Republican Party has written off the conservative Christian movement as a shrinking niche to be appeased but not feared, Jindal is working deliberately to consolidate their support and position himself as the election-year champion of values voters — building relationships with evangelical power brokers, surrounding himself with veterans of Rick Perry’s 2012 campaign, and lacing his rhetoric with culture-war calls for religious freedom.
The strategy has begun to catch the attention of key figures on the Christian right.
Michael Farris, the founder of the evangelical Patrick Henry College and a champion of Christian home-schoolers — a key element of Iowa’s conservative base — said Jindal’s name is buzzing in activist circles.

“I think he’s a top-tier candidate and he’ll resonate a lot with that community,” Farris said, comparing him to Mike Huckabee, the minister-cum-candidate who remains one of the brightest stars on the religious right…..

The court in a narrow ruling has supported a small group of home healthcare workers from having to pay a union fee even though they are NOT in the Union…

The Supreme Court ruling ONLY covers the plaintive in the case….

The ruling leaves in place the paying of “fee’s’ by non-union workers around the country to the unions that negotiate their benefits and salaries, something unions around the nation had be worried about losing….

In a 5-4 split along ideological lines, the justices said the practice violates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take.

The ruling is a setback for labor unions that have bolstered their ranks — and bank accounts — in Illinois and other states by signing up hundreds of thousands of in-home care workers. It could lead to an exodus of members who will have little incentive to pay dues if nonmembers don’t have to share the burden of union costs.

But the ruling was limited to this particular segment of workers — not private sector unions — and it stopped short of overturning decades of practice that has generally allowed public sector unions to pass through their representation costs to nonmembers….

The Supreme Court says corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.

The justices’ 5-4 decision Monday is the first time that the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law. And it means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under objecting companies’ health insurance plans.

Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the health care law that President Barack Obama signed in 2010 and the Supreme Court upheld two years later….

The extremist group battling its way through swaths of Iraq and Syria declared the creation of a formal Islamic state Sunday, building on its recent military gains and laying down an ambitious challenge to al-Qaeda’s established leadership.

In an audio statement posted on the Internet, the spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria announced the restoration of the 7th-century Islamic caliphate, a long-declared goal of the al-Qaeda renegades who broke with the mainstream organization early this year and have since asserted control over large areas spanning the two countries.

The move signifies “a new era of international jihad,” said the spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who also declared an end to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as the group had called itself.

Henceforth, ISIS will simply be known as the Islamic State, in recognition of the breakdown of international borders achieved as a result of the group’s conquests, he said. ISIS’s chief, an Iraqi known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, will be the caliph, or leader, of the new caliphate, and all Muslims worldwide will be required to pay allegiance to him.

The proclamation is a powerful challenge to al-Qaeda’s chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who also claims supremacy over the global jihadist movement. Zawahiri repudiated Baghdadi early this year after the Iraqi leader rejected repeated al-Qaeda directives to adopt a more inclusive approach toward other jihadist groups, and it is unlikely that he will agree to bow to the authority of the proclaimed new caliph….

The media has been helping Iraq PM Maliki make the US the bad guys for NOT hurrying in delivering F-16 ‘s to his country…..Russia HAS delivered some old used SU-25’s to the Iraq Air Force….The Iraqi’s used to flub them more than a decade ago…

The Russian’s have said they will NOT fly any missions….

Iran is rumored to be thinking about returning F1 Mirages and other OLD Russian type fighter jets it captured during the Iraq-Iranian War…..

Iraqi forces carried out repeated airstrikes, mostly using helicopters, on insurgent targets throughout the city on Sunday for the fourth day in a row, witnesses said.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
The Iraqi army remained in control of roads leading into Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace and a longtime stronghold of Sunni hard-liners, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, and also controlled the campus of Salahuddin University in Tikrit and a military base, Camp Speicher, on the outskirts of the city.

The military’s advance, supported by tanks and helicopter gunships, was hampered by a large number of bombs planted along the roads, a common tactic of the insurgents.

According to a security official in Tikrit, speaking on the condition of anonymity as a matter of government policy, ISIS fighters had kidnapped six relatives of Maj. Gen. Jumaa al-Jabouri, deputy commander of Iraqi military operations in Salahuddin Province, holding them hostage and destroying their homes in the eastern part of the city.

What appeared to be a jumbo Russian transport aircraft was shown Saturday night on Iraqiya, the state television network, unloading the SU-25 warplanes at what was believed to be an air base in Taji, a short distance north of Baghdad.

The new aircraft “will increase and support the strength and capability of the Iraqi air forces to eliminate terrorism,” a statement issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said.

The Iraqis have asked the United States for help in buying aircraft such as F-16s and advanced helicopter gunships, some of which they do already have, but Congress has been reluctant to approve more such sales until Mr. Maliki forms a government that is more inclusive of Sunni and Kurdish leaders.

There have also been unconfirmed reports that Iran was prepared to return some of the Iraqi warplanes that Saddam Hussein flew to Iran in 1991 to escape American destruction. Those included 24 French F1 Mirage fighters, and 80 Russian jets….

The Hill does a piece on Senators Warren and Booker and how they are going around spreading the word for Democrats….

Their work brings good and bad politic’s….

Booker and Warren are both fresh faces, in the Senate for just a few years or less. They can still effectively make the case that Washington can be changed, and Democrats are the ones to do it — a message both ran on, and won on, in their own campaigns.

And they can make that case to key Democratic constituencies. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu needs black and young voters to turn out for her this fall, and when Booker visited the state to support her campaign, he headlined a young professionals fundraiser for her and held a roundtable discussion about education reform with her in heavily black New Orleans.

In North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D) faces a similar predicament, Booker toured a handful of churches, some predominantly black Baptist churches.

Warren will be speaking at Louisville University this weekend, for an event on college affordability, again a pitch to young voters. And the campaigns see her as a good messenger for women, a significant voting bloc in Kentucky, West Virginia and Georgia, where she’s helped Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn as well.

Both Booker and Warren are likely to crop up more and more on the campaign trail this cycle, with Obama’s value as a surrogate declining with his approval rating. But the benefit is, for Booker and Warren, mutual.

President Obama said on Sunday that he didn’t think the flap over Hillary Clinton’s wealth and speaking fees would be an issue for very long.

“I think that Hillary has been to this rodeo a bunch of times,” Obama said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Clinton, long rumored to be running for president in 2016, has prompted criticism for saying that she and former President Clinton were “dead broke” when he left office, and for appearance fees like the $225,000 she’s set to receive from a Nevada university.

“As soon as you jump back into the spotlight in a more explicitly political way, you’re going to be flyspecked like this,” Obama said. “She’s accustomed to it. Over time, I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference.”

Should non-union members at an organization that get union negotiated raises and benefits be forced to pay the union a fee equal to union dues, is the question before the court…

Courts for years have recognized the rights of unions to ask non-members to pay dues for union negotiating costs, but a group of home healthcare workers in Harris vs. Quinn are challenging dues they pay to a branch of the Service Employees International Union as a violation of free speech.

The case is pitting business groups and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation against labor giants like the SEIU, which worry the court could rule broadly to prevent all non-members of public sector unions from being compelled to pay dues.
Such a decision from the court, which is expected to rule on Monday, could deliver a “kill shot” to organized labor at a time when it is already struggling with a declining membership.

Still, some labor supporters say they’re anticipating a loss.

“I expect the worst,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute.

The case was brought by Pamela Harris, who receives money from the state of Illinois to take care of her son.

Workers like Harris were once seen as independent contractors, but Illinois’s legislature in 2003 passed a law deeming them public employees. This forced people like Harris to have fees from their Medicare checks withheld as payment to the SEIU, which had the responsibility of representing all workers who were subject to the 2003 law.

Harris and others are arguing this represents a violation of their free speech. They say the state law compelled them to be represented by a union and to pay fees.

“That’s a huge injustice to force people to pay dues to a union that they want nothing to do with,” said Patrick Semmens, spokesman for the National Right to Work (NRTW) Legal Defense Fund.

A ruling that just affects the Illinois home workers might have a modest impact on labor law, but a broader ruling that prevents public sector unions from collecting dues from non-members could take millions of dollars out of their coffers.

“We’re concerned, but it’s certainly not going to stop workers from coming together with their unions and fighting to improve their jobs and the quality of public services,” said Judy Scott, general counsel at SEIU, which is a defendant in the case.

Eisenbrey argues the case is part of an effort by big business to further weaken union

The Iraqi Army on Saturday drove Islamic extremists from the center of a major city in central Iraq, for the first time mounting a concerted assault against insurgents who had charged to within 50 miles of Baghdad.

Independent sources, including local officials and witnesses, confirmed that an Iraqi Army counteroffensive had driven militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from the center of Tikrit, including from government buildings as well as from major roads and other positions throughout the city.

But fighting was still continuing, with Iraqi war planes bombing targets inside the city late in the afternoon.

Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, with a largely Sunni population of 250,000, is in the Tigris River valley, 100 miles north of Baghdad. It has long been a stronghold of antigovernment Sunnis in Iraq, and losing it would sever the insurgents’ lines of communication to Mosul and Syria. It could also strand some of their fighters in pockets south of Tikrit.

Some Iraqi military analysts said they thought it was no coincidence that the army’s counteroffensive was launched now, with 180 of the 300 American advisers ordered to Iraq by President Obama arriving over the past three days, but Iraqi officials denied that there was any American role.

If the advances by the Iraqi Army are sustained, and even built upon, it would provide a much needed morale boost for an army that lost as much as a fourth of its soldiers and equipment when ISIS overran Mosul, and has lurched from one embarrassment to another since then…..

A Democratic President who has been carrying the Reform Immigration Banner for the past 6 years is now asking Congress for MORE authority to Deport MORE people…

Last time around President Obama hired more Border Cops and spent BILLION’s to shore up the border…

Good Job…Except?

Like a flood of water?

You can keep bailing but you’re gonna sink if the water doesn’t stop…

This Dog thinks that NO matter HOW many border cops , fences or drones you got ?

It isn’t EVER gonna stop people from trying to come to this place..

And the way we handle this problem isn’t gonna solve it….

All that money spent by Obama and Congress is not enough…(It will NEVER be enough)

The system is currently overwhelmed so much Border cops have resorted to just putting people on buses to leave the border and make room for the next group….

Republicans can NOW cross their arms and smile…

They have the Democratic President dancing to their tune AGAIN….

Every-time he gets the cops to crack down so he can try to get some reform the Republican just stall and let him stew….Then he jumps up and deports MORE people A LOT of Young Children?)….Leaving HIM as the record holder in sending people back and Immigration Reform an empty promise Republican have been able bury…

President Obama will ask Congress to provide more than $2 billion in new funds to control the surge of illegal Central American migrants at the South Texas border, and to grant broader powers for immigration officials to speed deportations of children caught crossing without their parents, White House officials said on Saturday.

Mr. Obama will send a letter on Monday to alert Congress that he will seek an emergency appropriation for rapidly expanding border enforcement actions and humanitarian assistance programs to cope with the influx, which includes unrivaled numbers of unaccompanied minors and adults bringing children. The officials gave only a general estimate of the amount, saying the White House would send a detailed request for the funds when Congress returned after the Fourth of July recess that began Friday and ends July 7.

The president will also ask Congress to revise existing statutes to give the Homeland Security secretary, Jeh C. Johnson, new authorities to accelerate the screening and deportation of young unaccompanied migrants who are not from Mexico. Fast-track procedures are already in place to deport young migrants from Mexico because it shares a border with the United States.

Mr. Obama will also ask for tougher penalties for smugglers who bring children and other vulnerable migrants across the border illegally, the officials said…..